Farm Girls Know How To Celebrate

Our Farm Girls gathered to celebrate Valentines Day and our Three year anniversary. We have been on many adventures, created a lot of beautiful items, and most importantly held each other up during our journey through life's challenges and lots joys. I hope you have someone to share those special times with.
This gathering honored our three years of getting together. Farm Girl Robin made these for each one of us. Thank you Farm Girl Robin.
The table was set for this special Farm Girl Gathering.
That special little round valentine chocolate on the plate the pretty pink stripe straw came from Enchante' a chocolate shop in Milwaukie, Oregon. Go here to find out more information on it K.Maire. Enchante' was just featured in the recent Where Women Cook magazine, go check it out.
I found this fun drink at New Seasons Rose Lemonade. Do you look for those special little drinks for your friend gathering? I always am on the hunt.
Heart shaped butter pats were in order for this little party. I made these using my $1.00 heart iced cube trays from the dollar store.
Check out that Heart shaped casserole dish. I think I covet it! Thank you Katy for sharing with us! She brought her mushroom soup in it.
Our soup was a Mushroom soup from Barefoot Contessa that Katy prepared for us. I have been gathering a collection of ironstone bowls, perfect to go with any table setting, don't you think?
Robin brought this Kale Beet Salad that she found on The Chew. It was yummy!
Paobread a Brazilian cheese bread. Gluten free of which I purchased from New Seasons. Have you tried these. A healthy choice. Yummy!
Beautiful heart shape tea sandwiches made my Erin. Yummy!
My plan was to make French Macarons. Well mine our the small ones on the left. I was not happy so I went to the Pearl in NW Portland and got the beautiful pink ones from The Pearl Bakery, then I was at New Seasons and found them in the freezer department, the small ones in the back ground. Well taste test results: mine won! I do want to master these girls and I will! Have any of you tried these and do you have a secrets to master them?
After our tea luncheon, we were ready to craft. The supplies were set out. I let the girls decide what they wanted to play with. Fimo clay and cinnamon applesauce hearts won out.
Here we are having fun creating with the fimo clay. Have you played with it lately?
Erin, Robin and Katy. I have a nice collection of bread boards that I always use, today they were used as the base to roll out the fimo.
Robin is using our metal stamping letters to put words on her hearts.
Katy was very smitten with her fimo santa face. Can you tell how smitten she is here?
My finished fimo clay hearts. I made some mini heart toothpick party favors. I have some great ideas for them. What would you do?
We were onto our next project Cinnamon applesauce hearts. Erin, Robin and Katy doing some serious mixing here. Have you done these before?
Robin mixing up our cinnamon applesauce dough.
Our finished cinnamon hearts to be used as tie on gifts or put in drawers to scent the space.
After making our craft project, we decided to exchange our Valentine gifts. As you can see on Katy's face, we are all giddy with excitement. I told the girls how when I was a little girl I never had birthday parties, let alone Valentine parties, other than at school in my primary grades. Did you have parties when you were young?
Katy, myself, and Erin. Yes these women know how to be childlike with excitement.
Hearts and stars were all a glitter to set the mood of our Valentine get together.
Don't you just love this vintage jar with these mini hearts inside?
This is just a reminder K.Marie opens this weekend in Milwaukie, Oregon. Go to her blog and get the detailed information. Have a serendipity weekend.

Farm Girl's Valentine Gathering

"Farm Girls gathered on Saturday February 6th at my home to celebrate Valentines Day, to create and just be together. I love having the girls come to my home, they are all so giddy and fun to watch and I love to bring out elements of surprises for them, creating a day to remember. We share our stories and our creations, always eager to share our skills with each other. Below you will see a couple of quilts I just made in the last month. Very simple but fun.
This is my quilt on "steroids" I had a few sleepless nights so I got up and started sewing. I had a bad chemical burn on my hands, so I had to get some medical help to heal them up, along with that comes the side effects, however well worth the miraculous healing the meds do. Since I use my hands in my healing work, they have to be well. They say every quilt has a story, well mine will not be lost.
This is my Red and White Valentine quilt, very simple but just perfect for that lap blanket. It is quilted with a heart pattern and will be finished with a white back ground and red dot binding,
Robin and Katy with lots of smiles just because we are getting together. Our bond as friends continues to grow, we have now just hit our one year anniversary as "Farm Girls" wow, the bond is strong, we know we can lean on each for strength when needed, no burden is to great to bear, we are here for the long term. I hope many of you have this bond with some one.
Some of our shared Valentine treasures we received.
Erin and I sharing our stories, we share our apron stories and journal pages from our last gathering and what ever might be happening for us at this time. Katy and I have both experienced the loss of a loved one this past week, so bringing our group together gives us a wonderful lift to our spirits.
Katy's husband Eric surprised us all with bouquets of flowers, I sure think he gained some extra brownie points from all of us. Thank you Eric.

Robin was our teacher for this project and she most definitely has down the embroidery work, and we all thank her for all her ideas and hard work gathering all the the things we needed to accomplish this project.
Here are some samples that Robin brought to give us some ideas of things we might like to make in the future. She also blessed us with a great little card holder, that I quickly put my coffee card in. I think I will have to try and make some more of them. Thanks Robin.
With lots of wool scraps to work with, we set about to create our wool pin cushions.


Erin and I will our wool pin cushions, I think we were very happy with our creations, don't you?
Robin showing her pincushion.
Katy with her finished pin cushion.
Our lunch included a Hearty soup made by Erin, a spinach pear salad provided by Robin, and I provided mini quiches to round off our luncheon. We had Lavender Lemonade, which we soon learned as we were creating we were pretty relaxed, um could it have been the lavender, maybe.
Our desert was provided by Katy in this beautiful heart shape baking dish from Le creuset, it was a Bare Foot Contessa recipe of apple crisp. Yummy. I will leave you with some fun settings that I created for the atmosphere of the day. Enjoy.






I am a pretty lucky lady as I also had another Valentine gathering with my sister hood group that I will post next. I hope your Valentines is everything you would want it to be.

Farm Girls Gather For Fall Fun

These happy pumpkins are in all their glory down by the river side, don't you think? On October 31, the farm girls gathered at the home of Katy's, to share and eat and create and be out in the wonderful fall weather, we were blessed with clear sky's until we were headed back to the house to have some lunch, that is when it started to rain.
Erin, Katy and Robin at the gathering table, we shared our journal pages from our last gathering and our apron stories. Erin and Robin shared their concerns about the proposed BPA power lines that might effect their land, check out Erin's blog for more information on this issue, if you have any insight do leave her a comment.
Here are Katy's two friends, the geldings Reno the black one and Lewis the brown one, they wanted to know what all the excitement was all about.
With the wheel barrel full of pumpkins nesting on straw, along with supplies to helps us with our creating we were off to do some artistic work in our child like way. For me I had not carved pumpkins in about 15 to 20 years, since my girls have grown and moved away. We all became child like. I think we should all do that once in awhile, don't you?
With Erin at the helm pushing the wheel barrel full of our pumpkins we followed the leaf filled pathway to our destination for creating. I had been down here before with Katy, so I was in great anticipation for what Erin and Robin would think of our setting. I think they felt the serenity.
Along the trail there were many of these settings to be found, complete with little gnomes hiding in the bushes, birdhouses among the trees engulfed in moss and ferns, along the way back to the house we took the trail where Katy had placed her signs that she had made from our last farm girl gathering, the route back is when my battery died on the camera and I did not have the little camera with me until I got back to the house. Another post will have to be that trail that we followed, with some great ahhhhh moments.
Katy and Erin about to reach our destination, this wonderful shelter was perfect for our creating.
What a great back ground for us to be working at, we heard geese flying over, a frog jumping, and just the wind brushing through the leaves, along with the water roaring down its stream. Fall was definitely in the air.
Inspiration and tools were put together for us to do our creating. Let the fun begin.
Erin was probably one of the first to get her top cut out, I think she is having fun. She is experienced at this, as she had already had some family carving time this year.
Katy cleaning out her pumpkin, one way to get gooey. Huh?
Erin and I cleaning out our pumpkins, I just kept thinking how some wild critter was sure going to enjoy this feast and who knows maybe Katy will have a pumpkin patch growing down here next spring.
Robin cleaning out her pumpkin. Oh I have to do this part? Icky.
Here we are just finishing up our pumpkins, we were so lucky, as it did not rain until we almost got back to the house.
Here is Katy serving up our yummy warm soup, we also had a fresh green salad, sour dough bread, some lemon bread and what Katy called eye balls, which were made taking a spinach leaf, layering a sliced tomato on the leaf, then a mozzarella ball on top, then a pimento stuffed olive on top to complete the eye ball, then drizzled with olive oil and salt and pepper. Our desert was a pumpkin roll and pumpkin ice cream to finish off the theme of the meal.
Our lunch was so yummy, it was a butternut squash and apple soup from the Barefoot Contessa's Parties cookbook, it was kept warming in the crock pot while we were down at the river playing. It was perfect way to warm up after carving our pumpkins.
Robin made us all signs, which was perfect, I love the saying and the heart wood cut out, she also made us some yummy cookies and Mary Jane's Carmel corn, yummy. Thanks Robin.
Erin blessed us with a mask to wear, I really liked mine and it went with what I had on, how perfect was that?
Although this photo is a little dark, my big camera battery died on me, so I had to bring out the small one and it does not do well in darker settings, anyway you might be able to tell we were having some great merriment in checking out our treats from each other. Thank you everyone. I don't have a photo editing program or I would try to lighten the photo up. Enjoy anyway.
Katy blessed us with our own "farm girl" brick, mine found its home right away. Thank you Katy for hostessing our gathering and providing us with great nourishment and fun. Katy also sent us home with dinner already made, an "meat pasty" is what she called it, it is like a meat pot pie in a beautiful pie plate, we are very blessed to have her in our group. Don't you think?